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"The government has offered no...unique reason to treat ACORN differently from other contractors accused of serious misconduct or to bar ACORN from federal funding without either a judicial trial or an administrative process applicable to all government contractors."

The court declared that the provisions of the "FY 2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act," an amalgam of six separate bills which President Barack Obama signed into law on Dec. 16, 2009, which sought to strip ACORN of their right to enter future contracts with the U.S. government and to deprive them of all federal funding, save what had already been earned on existing contracts, amounted to an unconstitutional Bill of Attainder in violation of Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution.

Gershon's decision comes on the heels of a recent string of legal and public relations exhonerations for the community group which has long been targeted by the GOP, in large part, for their successful work in legally registering hundreds of thousands of low- and middle-income voters who tend to favor Democratic candidates...

The nature of the bar and the context within in which it occurred make it unmistakable that Congress determined ACORN’s guilt before defunding it….Wholly apart from the vociferous comments by various members of Congress as to ACORN’s criminality and fraud…no reasonable observer could suppose that such severe action would have been taken in the absence of a conclusion that misconduct had occurred.

The court also opined that it made no difference that the Act included provisions for Congressional investigations:

Congress is entitled to investigate ACORN and to determine whether the executive agencies with whom plaintiffs have contracted have properly held them to account. But Congress could not rely on the negative results of a negative congressional or executive report to impose a broad, punitive funding ban on a organization; explicit, non-judicial findings of guilt would exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the punitive nature of the challenged provisions.

For those unfamiliar with the basics of our constitutional system, the issue goes to the heart of our separation of powers. Issues of guilt or innocence are not to be determined by the executive or legislative branches but by an impartial judiciary. There are administrative agencies which can carry out judicial-like functions, but these agencies preserve the right to due process of law.

Under the Administrative Procedures Act, it is appropriate to determine whether a contractor has misused federal funds, but those procedures, as Gershon found, were not followed.

Darius Charney, an attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represented ACORN in this landmark U.S. District Court case observed:

Members of Congress were found to have violated the Constitution by declaring an organization guilty of a crime and punishing it and its members without benefit of a trial, then underhandedly passed a new budget doing exactly the same thing. While this ruling may not be the end of the unfair targeting of ACORN, it is certainly a step in the right direction to protecting the fundamental right to due process. Today Court upheld the Constitution and the rule of law – the people will benefit from this exercise of our system of checks and balances.

More details on the legal issues are available via The BRAD BLOG's earlier coverage of suit:

Gershon's judgment comes on the heels of the completion of a five-month investigation by the Kings County, NY District Attorney's office examining the secretly-taped videos taken of ACORN Housing workers in Brooklyn and released by rightwing activists James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles and Andrew Breitbart.

The D.A. released a statement finding "no criminality" last week, after which sources from their office told the New York Post that the videos amounted to a "'heavily edited' splice job that only made it appear as though the organization's workers were advising a pimp and prostitute on how to get a mortgage...[with] many of the seemingly crime-encouraging answers...taken out of context so as to appear more sinister."

It was after the release of the highly publicized release of those doctored video tapes --- publicity which has recently been shown to have been a hoax and based on a number of out-and-out deceptions --- that Congress quickly, and unconstitutionally, moved to defund ACORN.

What is truly disturbing, however, is that this concocted tale would be unquestioningly accepted as legitimate by the corporate media and by Congress, which, in their rush to mollify the noisy hard-right, displayed a profound ignorance of basic concepts of fundamental fairness and due process of law.

ACORN was prematurely and inappropriately tried and convicted in the press and in Congress, without so much as a single hearing, vis a vis a grotesque and shameful word-of-mouth propaganda lynch job unseen since the days of Joseph McCarthy, the disgraced, right-wing demagogue who misused his powerful perch in the U.S. Senate to smear "loyal Americans as disloyal" and who falsely "charged that the government was being undermined from within"

Perhaps now, with the hoax so thoroughly exposed, with the community group having been cleared of wrongdoing by one formal investigation after another, with Judge Gershon having shamed both Congress and the corporate owned media for having ignored the fundamental precepts of our constitutional system of government, Congress and the corporate media will, finally, step forward and correct the terrible injustice they imposed on a benevolent, if imperfect, community organization.

Unfortunately, neither its headline, "No Crime in Acorn’s Advice to ‘Pimp,’ D.A. Says," nor the text of its article in which continues to report that "James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles visited Acorn offices in several cities using the pimp and prostitute tale," come close to what really happened.

America's "paper of record" failed to so much as mention Judge Gershon's finding that the bill which sought to strip ACORN of all Congressional funding was an unconstitutional bill of attainder.

But we are pleased to report that responsible journalism is not entirely dead in the corporate sector. The Washington Post published a well-written piece, "NYC judge: Govt must stop blocking money to ACORN," though its title is a bit off, since Judge Gershon is a federal judge, not a New York City judge.

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Ernest A. Canning has been an active member of the California state bar since 1977. Mr. Canning has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science as well as a juris doctor. He is also a Vietnam vet (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968).

This bitch needs to be disbarred, locked up, run out of town, exiled, whatever else you can come up with. She's scum. And ACORN is even worse. And so is the SEIU. ALL of it, working AGAINST this country and the people of the US who know what the REAL truth is. She, ACORN, SEIU and OBAMA are all no more than traitors to this country.

Same way he buried the Blackwater story, Adam, or that of Sibel Edmonds. For the corporate media it's sort of like the question, if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one within miles of it, did it make a sound?

It is outrageous and inexplicable. There is no way it can be justified with any intellectual honesty or any moral standard. All they can do is repeat their lies, and I bet they will. (In countries like Argentina and Chile, fascist criminals did finally face justice. Maybe the same thing will happen in the United States some day.)

This bitch needs to be disbarred, locked up, run out of town, exiled, whatever else you can come up with. She's scum. And ACORN is even worse. And so is the SEIU. ALL of it, working AGAINST this country and the people of the US who know what the REAL truth is. She, ACORN, SEIU and OBAMA are all no more than traitors to this country.

I get it. You're angry. I understand. I would be too. But not at the judge or ACORN or SEIU, but rather to the folks who so mislead you about all of the above. Folks like L.A. County Deputy District Attorney Patrick "Patterico" Frey who has helped fool you into believing the folks mentioned above are "traitors".

There is a reason why ACORN has been exhonerated in one case after another, amigo. And it's either because *everybody in the world* is a "traitor" or maybe, just maybe, you've been misinformed and played for a sucker by the GOP con-man that you've decided to believe in.

Think about it, my friend. The facts are all there if you feel like skipping the kool-aid for a day or two.

The comment #1 shows how people on the right think: they think their wrong discriminatory unconstitutional way should be forced upon everyone. Sorry, that isn't the way the United States works, you unAmerican bastard!!!

And O'Keefe, Breitbart, and all you idiotic commenters: HA HA HA HA HA, GOOD FOR YOU!!! Take your high blood pressure medicine now!!! And this will be the end of your "sting" hoax videos. I hate you people!!!

JDS I cordially invite you to attend Judge Nina Gershon's chambers and repeat exactly what you have written here.
Of course I know you won't because you are a typical right wing blowhard and too cowardly to back up the rabid froth you spew.
However to give you the benefit of doubt I invite you to prove me wrong.....please!

Boy, if this keeps up, people will start thinking ACORN was targeted because Republicans simply hate black people.

But we know that's not true. They also hate women with jobs, happy gay people, miserable poor people, all people in need of medical attention, intelligent people who happen to speak one of them foreign languages, intelligent people in general, all people who live near high-yield oilfields, all people who oppose wars of aggression, people with unfavorable views of torturing non-Caucasians, people who wonder who's been listening in on our phone conversations and browsing our library lists, people who still believe in habeas corpus, people who don't use the U.S. flag as bling, and people who don't even exist --- like Murphy Brown.

But let us not jump to conclusions. There's always a good explanation.

From the ruling:
"The government has offered no... unique reason to treat ACORN differently from other contractors accused of serious misconduct and to bar ACORN from federal funding without either a judicial trial or the administrative process applicable to all other government contractors."

And:

"In addition to their irreperable economic harms, plaintiffs have also established reputational injuries for which they can never recover damages at law" (due to sovereign immunity).

Brava, Judge Gershon. Extra points for choosing to follow a state judge's ruling as closer precedent than the irrelevant (and corrupt) jabber from the thug-five.

Amazing body of work here, gentlemen! I'm sorry I missed all this for so long. I did see good rebuttal on Rachel Maddow's show, which I downloaded, and am converting to DVD — for my yearly trip to San Diego. My brother-in-law, a good man, a well meaning but somewhat benighted former Arkansan, mentioned on the phone, "sure glad they got ACORN" —

I'm going through this huge body of material and putting it in my PDA, with links interconnecting. Thanks for all you do.

Not that it will do any good, but then that's why I prefer intelligent, informed sources like BradBlog to the corporate media. Many thanks to Brad and to Ernest A. Canning for this excellent reportage of the court decision.

ACORN is an outfit that helps the poor get the government to provide more government services.

'ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities' (ACORN website).

I have no doubt they play the same tricks as all the rest of the fanatical federalists do.

I think that the aims of ACORN would chain me to the wheel of communist slavery. But that is my opinion, which has been moulded by constant study of international communism since 1984.

Could ACORN be 'controlled opposition? Perhaps,
but any judge that gives one these stooges a pass, then I have to suspect that the judge is either an agent or some useful idiot serving the forces of internationalism, and communism. (Totaly unamerican).

They used to shame communists in this land. Then they shamed the watchers on the wall. Now the barbarians are at the gate.

Americans, keep the fire underneath the feet of these scoundrels at all times!

Vote Anti-Federalist!
Organize the Anarchists!
And shun the heritics and infidels
who worship the State!

Aw didn't red baiting go out years ago Keane? Your rant is not based out of any rational thought. You're basically claiming a judge who says a Bill of Attainder is unconstitutional is somehow a communist agent. Wow that's just paranoia. We used to do a lot of things in this country besides calling people we disagree with communists. We used to burn people at the stake for "being" witches, we used to hang people we didn't like, we used to take lands from people who were here first. Those must have been the good old days right keane?

Hey Jim,
Bite me! A community organization helping thousands of less fortunate has to close its doors after fighting baseless charges and doctored videos from right wingnuts and you say America wins? AmeriKa wins I guess. So go under your rock and celebrate your cruel and insidious "victory". ACORN did nothing wrong - the assholes who set them up should be sued for millions.